West Germany as a whole took the execution of Adolf Eichmann this weekend in its stride, hearing and reading the news of Eichmann’s hanging in Israel with the general feeling, best described by press experts here, of relief that “the thing is over.” Most Germans, it appeared from comments in the press, had evidently written Eichmann off even before Israel had recorded finis to the Eichmann story.
A West German Government spokesman said in Bonn: “Justice has been done.” The Free Democratic Party, a partner in Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s coalition Government, said in a communique: “Even in his hour of death, this terrible official of the Hitler and Himmler regime failed to show the slightest remorse or sympathy for the millions of innocent victims of his activity during the Third Reich.”
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